


we chew the stars to taste the burn of creation

by CherFleur



Series: SW prompts [11]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Chirrut found a Jedi can he keep him?, Gen, The Force Is Weird (Star Wars), the undeadening of a space hobo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:55:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28984485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherFleur/pseuds/CherFleur
Summary: He'd known what would happen to him. He'd known that death was just another part of life.It was living that was unexpected.
Relationships: Jon Antilles & Chirrut Îmwe, Jon Antilles & The Force
Series: SW prompts [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1971988
Comments: 6
Kudos: 83





	we chew the stars to taste the burn of creation

**Author's Note:**

> I think Briar prompted something like this way back when but I can't remember and I'm too lazy to check the discord lol. But here! Have thing!

The stars hung like an echo caught between his teeth, swallowed down to turn his lungs into the bellows for the furnace in his belly, boiling away. Whispers and songs and words not yet spoken and yet declared so long ago in forgotten tongues curved across his skin like a blade into flesh, like a lover's prayer to his lips. The fabric of his broken down and sewn together time and time again, with each giant born and collapsed in the eternity of a moment.

There was peace and serenity made vibrant and joyous by the chaos and corrosion that came before, cycle after cycle. War and birth and death and growth and expansion and extinction and -

_I do believe you're lost, my friend._

In the brilliant place he'd fallen to in his meditation, in his death, there was light and darkness unlike anything he'd ever seen before. A kaleidoscope of colors that weren't part of the human spectrum that he now knew weaved parts of his soul together, as if the Force were a tapestry of shadow and shades, each more awesome than the last. If he'd had the heart, he'd have wept with joy and grief and the unknowable exhaustion of knowing too much and yet every thought a gossamer string to be pulled away and made into something new.

_You've wandered a little too far, my friend. Won't you come back?_

Here in this not-place of never-always-eternity-ending there was so much and yet so little, and - and he thinks that the presence is right.

**I'm... lost?**

_Ah, there you are! Now that you've let me find you, would you say that you are still lost when someone knows where you are?_

That seemed a little too philosophical for him at the moment, and he worried that maybe there was nowhere else to go. The Force was beauty and creation, but it was also the endless continuation of death and rebirth. Perhaps he was not supposed to return from where he had lost himself. Perhaps there was nowhere to go to.

_Do not worry, my friend. I am here._

For reasons he could not guess, could not fathom, that was reassuring, like a shade of an echo of those singing stars of eons gone by and yet unlived.

_Now, my friend. Open your eyes._

And Jon did.

There was no moment of disbelief that he couldn't open his eyes, that he would not be able to, because the dead do not have eyes in this sense, and yet he opened them all the same. Above him was the high arc of a craggy cave ceiling glimmering and lit with kyber and moss, silk worms swaying in a breeze unfelt by skin, yet the threads of his soul pressed by gentle hands back inside his skin shivered with it.

The Force was strong here.

Strong, but gentle in a way that Ilum wasn't.

"Hello, my friend. I'm glad you found yourself."

Blinking slowly, he faced the presence that had lead him out of the recesses of the Force, a guiding light that carried laughter within. A man, his smile wide and cheerful, his eyes clouded as he regarded Jon with blind kindness and serene focus.

"My name is Chirrut Imwe, and this is the first time I've found a naked man in the kyber caves!" Chirrut beamed brighter, his presence in the Force playful and fun and comforting in ways that soothed the ragged edges of Jon's existence. "New experiences are meant to be shared, don't you think?"

"I... don't _think_ that I've been found naked in a cave before?" he managed, mind fuzzy and not yet focused. "But I... I think I died?"

"Hm?" a long fingered hand covered in calluses and stained with red clay from prayer lifted to tap at the blind man's chin. "Well, that is also a new experience. But we are One with the Force and the Force is with us, so it isn't unthinkable."

The man pulled off the dark outer robe he was wearing, showing the red sash and gray clothing beneath, one shoulder bared. Chirrut cast the removed outer robe gently over Jon's prone form, where he was still relearning the limits of his skin, and the newly alive again Jedi shuddered before relaxing into the heat of it. Warmth that was more than just physical. The way that memory was sewn into every stitch, a life well lived and sorrows made weaker for all the joy that shone around them.

"Welcome to Jedha, my friend."


End file.
